Thirunelveli Becomes First 100 Percent Waste Segregation Town

Thiruneveli in Tamil Nadu becomes India's first 100% waste segregation town. The municipality had collected biodegradable and non-biodegradable wastage separately from every house in the town. It has become possible in just 5 months of strict implementation.

The town has around 1.6 lakh households and implemented this from April 2016. The biodegradable waste is collected everyday while non-biodegradable waste is collected once in a week on Wednesday. The municipality made this possible in the city of 4.8 lakh population by campaign, local TV and radio channels and NGOs.

The municipality made it mandatory to segregate the waste in every households and office separately before disposal. They said they won’t collect the waste if it is not separated as bio and non-biodegradable one.

The municipal commissioner S Sivasubramanian told TOI, 'Our sanitation workers went to each house, collected an undertaking from each of them saying that they will segregate waste at home. We distributed two waste bins to every household. I wrote personal letters to each house to make this a success and we made public announcements using loudspeakers across the city for two months.'

It has become a role model to other cities and towns across the country. Hope now it becomes easy for the other municipalities to follow the same.